Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

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Geoforum

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Mobile householding and marital dissolution in Vietnam: Aninevitable consequence?

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.03.002

⇑ Corresponding author.E-mail address: c.locke@uea.ac.uk (C. Locke).

Catherine Locke a,⇑, Thi Thanh Tam Nguyen b, Thi Ngan Hoa Nguyen c

a School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UKb Institute for Family and Gender Studies, Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, Hanoi, Viet Namc Centre for Gender and Family Studies, Southern Institute for Sustainable Development, Ho Chi Minh, Viet Nam

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online 6 April 2013

Keywords:MigrationGenderMarriageMarital dissolution

a b s t r a c t

The challenges of householding across time and space inevitably strain marital roles and relationships, aswell as providing temptations and opportunities for sexual infidelity, and is assumed to increase the pro-pensity for marital breakdown. This paper raises questions about the assumed relationship between migra-tion and marital disruption through qualitative evidence from Vietnam. We focus on 14 men and womenmigrants with disrupted marriages in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh. We explore their interpretations of the break-down of their marriages and the role that migration played within this. Long-standing views in Vietnam pri-oritise the creation and sustaining of household-level social processes over and above couple’s intimacy andemotional relationship and these are highly resilient in the face of extended spousal separation. At the sametime, though, some men and some women actively choose to disrupt their marriages where expectationsabout intimacy, fidelity, and obligations for provisioning and care were not met. We argue that migrationplays into experiences of marital disruption in highly divergent ways and experiences of marital disruptionand migration are more subtly gendered than is commonly portrayed. In doing so, we seek to contribute toboth the literature on householding and to policy thinking about responses to migration.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction greater propensity for marital dissolution is implicit within work that

This paper seeks to contribute to thinking about the relatively ne-glected relationship between mobility and marital breakdown. Theexpanding literature on transnational family relationships has con-tributed substantially to understanding how family relations are sus-tained over international migrations, with particular attention tomigrant mothers/wives and to parenting relationships. Although thisliterature has highlighted many of the challenges of transnationalfamily relations, there has been a relative dearth of attention to thedissolving of marriages in the context of transnational householding(Brickell, 2014; Boyle et al., 2008). There is, however, a largely un-evidenced assumption that ‘‘the stress of migrant life can intensifymarital tension, and [that] divorce is not uncommon’’ (Carling et al.,2012). It is argued that the challenges of transnational householding(Douglass, 2006) inevitably strain marital roles and relationships,undermine the quality of family relationships, as well as providingtemptations and opportunities for sexual infidelity. This can beviewed as an extension of the ‘pathologising’ of international migra-tion which is seen as responsible for problems of left-behind children(Zentgraf and Chinchilla, 2012). The view that international migrationentails deterioration in the quality of family relations leading to a

frames family separation in the context of international migration asakin to divorce: such an approach does not adequately distinguish be-tween divorcee fathers and migrant fathers (Nobles, 2011) and unjus-tifiably presumes that mobility across national borders is distinctfrom other kinds of spatial mobility. Nelson (1992) similarly critiquesthe assumption of literature on split households in Kenya that mar-ried life divided by distance can only ‘work’ where there are weakaffective ties between husband and wife. These kinds of views areexplicitly articulated within popular debate and policy rhetoric inplaces where chronic cross-border circular migration is regarded asa threat to family quality, such as Mexico (Nobles, 2011).

Rigorous academic studies of marital dissolution are mainly fo-cused on developed country contexts and are particularly absent inboth geography generally (Brickell, 2014) and in Asia in particular.Although within Asia significant attention has been focused onIslamic nations where traditionally high divorce rates have sub-stantially reversed (see for instance, Premchand and Jones(2011)), Vietnam belongs to a group of ‘low divorce’ societies thathave not been objects of interest for this topic. However Heuvelineand Poch’s (2006) paper on Cambodia deserves particular mentionfor its interesting analysis of the destabilising of marriage throughthe Khmer Rouge’s radical reform of marriage, the gendered imbal-ances arising from mortality under the Khmer regime, and the rapidsocial changes following its fall and the subsequent penetration of

2 Doi moi (meaning ‘renovation’) refers to the process of transition from centrally-

274 C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

globalisation. Also relevant is Chant and McIlwaine’s (1995) studyof the Philippines which highlights difficulties evidencing claimsabout urbanisation and marital instability where divorce is largelyprohibited. The strong pressures on women to maintain marriagesmeant that, although some women did separate to avoid unhappymarriages, many remained in marriages despite high degrees ofconflict. Most separation that did occur was informal and was often‘hidden’ to prevent gossip. Problems ‘seeing’ marital disruption inthe Philippines were further compounded by an unhelpful assump-tion that female-headed households were necessarily ‘victims ofwidowhood or desertion’ (p. 18). In Indonesia, Hugo (1992) notedwide variations across ethnic groups and class in divorce patterns:whilst in some contexts marriages can remain extremely stableduring separation for migration, in others it may be undermined.

Studies of marital dissolution beyond Asia have paid little atten-tion to the causal mechanisms between divorce and mobility (Boy-le et al., 2008). Those that do point in that direction are contested,nuaunced, and offer little support for generalised relationships orfor privileging a distinction between the effects of international,as opposed to internal, migration on marriage. Boyle et al. (2008)refer to the contestation of early ecological studies that posited arelationship between population turnover and union dissolutionin the context of the ‘frontier’ West in the USA (210). Frank andWildsmith (2005) found that Mexican cross-border migrants wereat increased risk of marital dissolution, but that it remained ahighly unusual living arrangement for children to have a divorcedfather migrant in the USA. Whilst Boyle et al.’s (2008) own studyfinds support for the idea that migration within the USA leads toa greater likelihood of divorce, these effects were not as large asthe effect of divorce on the likelihood of migrating. This dynamicmay be stronger where formal divorce is highly restricted: for in-stance, Tacoli (1999) in her study of Filipino women in Rome foundthat migration was one of the few options open to women whofound themselves unhappily married.

If the demographic ‘facts’ resist simple conclusions, investiga-tions into what divorce means in the context of migration throwup even more questions (Carling et al., 2012). De Jong and Graefe(2008) probe the processual significance of interactions betweenmigration and divorce within the USA and find that where divorcehappens after (rather than before) migration it has a more severe im-pact on family economic wellbeing. Counter-intuitively, Dreby(2010) found that migrant fathers from Mexico who divorced whilstin the USA tried to strengthen bonds with children (in contrast to mi-grant divorcee mothers who distanced themselves for a while). Sig-nificantly, Dreby also reports that migrant men became moreremote from their children when they were struggling to fulfil theirprovider role rather than vice versa. It is clear, then, that despite theeasy assumptions that migration will lead to more divorce, in fact,the inter-relation between migration and divorce is ‘much morecomplex than earlier research had presented’’ (Cooke, 2008: 2008).

This paper seeks to explore these complexities within the con-text of internal migration in Vietnam where the rapid growth of rur-al-to-urban migration has been widely associated in with a growingpropensity for marriages to break down or become non-functional(GSO, 2005; Jensen et al., 2008; Summerfield, 1997). We raise ques-tions about the assumed relationship between migration and mar-ital disruption by drawing on data from a larger study of low-income men and women migrants in their peak child-bearing yearsin Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh in 2008.1 We trace the marital and migra-tion trajectories of men and women migrants who have at some pointexperienced marital disruption (either unmarried parenthood,estrangement, separation, or divorce) and explore their experiences

1 This research was funded by the ESRC-DFID Joint Funding Scheme, RES-167-25-0327. The ESRC and DFID bear no responsibility for the views expressed or any errorstherein.

and interpretations of events and the role that migration played with-in them. We argue that the insights gained are relevant for wider de-bates about the inter-relations between mobility and maritaldissolution and can usefully contribute to both to the on-going refra-ming of transnational householding as well as to setting social policyagendas around migration and development.

2. Marriage and separation in Vietnam over time

Despite changing ideological emphases and shifting discoursesaround what family relations should be – from Confucian influences,through socialist reform and to globalised sexualised femininity –familial relations variously interpreted have remained central toindividual, relational and national identity in Vietnam (Belangerand Barbieri, 2009; Goodkind, 1996; Pham Van Bich, 1999; Phinney,2008; Rydstrom and Drummond, 2004; Santillan et al., 2004; Wer-ner, 2004; Wisensale, 1999). The resilience of family despite enor-mous disruptions, of war and now migration, is testimony to thenormative value of family unity within which marriage relationsare central. The peculiarly Vietnamese phenomenon of officially-sanctioned single motherhood as a response to sex imbalances fromthe war is a prime instance of this resilience – bringing women delib-erately seeking children without a husband within the fold of family(and thus preserving the ‘project’ of family that is in many ways par-allel to nation building in Vietnam) (Nguyen, 1996). By implication,marital disruption is in some senses indicative of social disorder.Family and proper family relations are seen as being vital to the so-cial reproduction of good citizens for the nation (Belanger and Bar-bieri, 2009; Phinney, 2008; Pettus, 2003; Rydstrom andDrummond, 2004; Wisensale, 1999). As such anxiety over the qual-ity of family relations may express insecurities about the changingsocial and economic order in Vietnam as much reflecting any objec-tive increase in marital disharmony or its manifestation as maritaldisruption of one sort or another (Brickell, 2014).

Dominant and long-standing views in Vietnam prioritise thecreation and sustaining of household-level social processes overand above couples’ intimacy and emotional relationship. This dom-inance of intergenerational relations has historically led to rela-tively weak conjugal relations (Pham Van Bich, 1999; Rydstrom,2006; Werner, 2004; Klingberg-Allvin et al., 2008). Santillan et al.(2004: 546 with reference to Le Thi Phuong Mai 1998) note that‘‘women are held responsible for maintaining harmony in the fam-ily and are often blamed in cases of familial conflict’’. Women areexpected ‘endure’ and Gammeltoft (2001) points to images of wo-men as ‘faithful, heroic and resourceful’ (p. 265). Within marriageResurreccion and Khanh (2007) note that with doi moi2 ‘‘[t]radi-tional norms of domesticity have come to replace former socialistethics’’ with a resurgent emphasis on the male-centred family andwomen’s obedience to fathers, husbands and then sons (p. 212). Inspite of the general shift away from arranged marriages and the pos-sibility that Vietnam’s increasing exposure to globalisation may alsohave increased the desire for greater spousal intimacy (Goodkind,1996; Hirschman and Minh, 2002; Summerfield, 1997), contempo-rary marriage practices maintain strong continuities with arrangedmarriage. Family approval retains a strong role, amounting in mostcases to an effective veto against unsuitable partners, and the char-acteristics desired by men and women in a prospective partner arestrikingly unchanged from the virtues valued under arranged mar-riages. The general preference for endogamy (marriage within the

planned socialist economy to ‘market socialism’ that began in Vietnam in the 1986,following broadly similar principles to that of the Chinese economic reforms.Although presented primarily an economic process, doi moi has entailed a restruc-turing of the social sector and a certain amount of redefinition of the relationship ofthe state to family life (see Locke et al. (2012) for further details).

5 The 2004 Migration Survey is reasonably representative of all migrants anddifferent sorts of internal migration streams, including rural-to-rural and urban-to-urban. These figures refer to all women surveyed, not just rural-to-urban migrants toHanoi and Ho Chi Minh. The percentages for disrupted marriages amongst men arenegligible with 8 male respondents (out of 2111) with disrupted marriage at firstmove, a year after first move and at the time of the survey (GSO, 2006: 34).

6 ‘Social evils’ are behaviours identified as undesirable by the state which continuesto play an active role in guiding the moral socialisation of citizens for the benefit of

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community or within a nearby one) persists, particularly in thenorth, and this proximity is important for both verifying the suitabil-ity of prospective partners and their families, and for enabling on-going relations between maternal-in-laws and daughters.

Although women first gained a formal right to divorce in 1483as part of the Hong Duc code of the Le Dynasty (UNDP, 2002), di-vorce remains in practice gender inequitable, particularly in theNorth where the influence of Confucianism is strongest.3 Confucianideals provide more support to men with respect to grounds for di-vorce and custody of children in that they require women to be vir-gins at marriage and sexually faithful within marriage whilsttolerating male sexual practice before, and male sexual infidelityduring, marriage (Rydstrom, 2006).4 Whilst socialist efforts, includ-ing notably the first Marriage and Family Law of 1960, targeted gen-der inequalities within marriage, they placed a high value on sexualmorality and the maintenance of marriage. Post doi-moi saw furtherremedy of de jure inequalities relating to marriage, divorce andinheritance but state ideology promoting Happy Families stronglydiscourages divorce and allocates women particular responsibilityfor sustaining marriages (Phinney, 2008). Formal provisions for childcustody that recognise the rights of mothers as well as fathers, con-trast with Confucian ideals that regard children, particularly sons, asbelonging to the patriliny and such tensions are likely to have beenintensified by smaller family sizes.

In practice, then, divorce for many remains stigmatised and wo-men fear both losing access to their children or, if they retain this,the burden of providing for their children and the consequencesfor their children of losing their place in their father’s lineage. Di-vorced women will often not marry again and whilst husbandsmay pay regular amounts for upkeep of children, and maintain arelationship with their child, Le Thi (2004) maintains that manydo not do this. Belanger and Li (2009) claim that in the north, it isrelatively unusual for a woman’s family to unconditionally accepther return to her natal home in the face of marital difficulties or dis-ruption. In contrast, divorced men are widely said to easily marryagain, often it is claimed taking a young wife again in her early tomid-20s. These normative discourses inevitably underestimatethe complex fluidity of marriages both historically and in the pres-ent day. In practice, there are important variations regionally (withthe stigma of divorce somewhat weaker in the south) (Belanger andLi, 2009; Goodkind, 1996), and in terms of class (with marital dis-ruptions being handled in different ways by the rural poor andthe urban elites) and rapid urbanisation (with divorce becomingsomewhat more tolerable in globalised cities and amongst elites)(Bland, 2011).

Despite a long tradition of male absence for work or for war, espe-cially in North, the contemporary increase in frequency and durationof migration has been associated by commentators with marital dis-ruption. Summerfield (1997), speaking of Vietnam and China, arguesthat ‘‘While many of the [migrant] family members send moneyhome and maintain their ties with the rural areas, growing numbersof men either divorce or illegally start a second family in the city.Migration. . . is now contributing to a small but growing trend forfamilies to break up; even as part of a working strategy to improvefamily wealth, [it]. . . introduces new strains on all family mem-bers’’(p. 206). Despite many similar pronouncements, evidence re-mains weak indicating that a degree of moral panic may be atwork in Vietnam. A national survey of migrants does however sug-gest that the experience of marital disruption for migrants is gen-dered: not only do 2% of women migrants have disruptedmarriages at first move, but those who are single marry more quicklyand are more likely to experience marital disruption than their male

3 However, Confucianism in Vietnam is notably tempered in relation to its practicein China by bilateral family relations.

4 These ideals are evident in the historical practice of polygamy and concubinage.

counterparts (GSO, 2006).5 It is also possible that migration offers fe-male divorcees a means of escaping criticism in the village: in otherwords, rather than causing divorce, migration may offer the possibilityof removing oneself from the stigma of being a divorcee.

Elsewhere we describe how residential separation of spouses isdominated by anxieties which reflect gendered expectations ofmarital fidelity, sacrifice and self-discipline (Locke et al., 2012).Dominant narratives about migration and divorce are highly gen-dered emphasising the importance of wife’s sexual fidelity andthe inevitability of husband’s sexual infidelity. Whilst wives whostay in the countryside are said to be ‘left behind’, husbands whoremain there describe themselves as having ‘sent their wife’ tothe city. Left-behind wives must ‘have faith’ that their husband’will not be tempted to get involved in ‘social evils’6 or other rela-tionships. In contrast, left-behind husbands emphasise how personaland social controls over migrant wives’ behaviours ensure theirfidelity. In a context where divorce is deeply shameful, particularlyfor women, left-behind husbands articulate their absolute refusalto tolerate infidelity (see also Hoang, 2011). Moreover, husbandsclaim that migrant wives do not ‘go around’ the city and point tothe social surveillance arising from sharing guest house rooms inthe city with other women from their village.

In this paper, we probe the ways in which divorce may or may notbe related to migration. We argue that normative positions about whois likely to divorce, how and why, belie the complexity of real life rela-tionships. Our primary analytical concern in our wider research hasbeen with the reproductive relations of labour migrants: we askedhow people who go away for work manage the business of buildingand sustaining family relationships. The conceptualisation of house-holding (Douglass, 2006) has been effective at linking up social repro-duction concerns around inter-dependent relationships and caringroles and their dynamic responses to migration. The idea of the family,as a shared project undertaken by spatially-separated membersembedded within changing contexts of origin and destination, fits thiswell and, as Brickell (2014) argues, has potential to be extended toembrace the ‘un-making’ and ‘re-making’ of household that occurswith marital dissolutions. Although householding research has primar-ily addressed transnational migrations, it is equally apposite for trans-local householding within country in contexts like Vietnam wherecitizenship entitlements independent of home place are poorly estab-lished as a result of household registration systems or their remnants.Indeed, Brickell and Datta (2011) situate the migrant experience with-in/across particular ‘locales’ without confining it to the territorialboundedness of the nation state. We look at translocal householdingfor low-income rural-to-urban migrants from a gendered life courseperspective: our focus is on the period in migrants’ lives when theyare building young families and here we engage closely with thosewho have experiences of marital disruption during this vital process.

3. The study

The life histories we discuss here are a sub-sample of a widerdataset.7 The wider study is a qualitative study of the strategies that

the nation. These typically include excessive drinking, gambling, the taking of drugs,illicit and commercial sex, as well as thieving, cheating, and violence.

7 This dataset is archived with the UK Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) andfurther information about the project and its outputs is available at www.uea.ac.uk/international-development/People/staffresearch/clockeresearch/LinkingMRW.

Table 1Wider dataset of 77 migrants.

Low-income rural–urban migrants in peak child-bearing yearsa Hanoi Ho Chi MInh

Male migrants Female migrants Male migrants Female migrants

Spouse left-behind 5 5 6 5Migrating with spouse 5 5 5 5Spouse migrating elsewhere 5 5 5 5Marital disruption 2 5 4 5

a Defined as having at least one child under 8 years of age.

Table 2Sub-sample of 14 migrants who have experienced marital disruption.

Hanoi Ho Chi Minh

Male migrants Hung (32 years); Toan (36 years) Viet (30 years); Sang (38 years); Thanh (48 years); Duong (32 years)Female migrants Nga (35 years); Hai (28 years); Cuc (39 years); Tran (37 years) Lien (30 years); Minh (36 years); Mai (36 years)a; Ha (26 years)

a Pseudonyms were allocated by Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam and Nguyen Thi Ngan Hoa and the full dataset is archived for use by other researchers by the Economic and SocialData Service in the UK Data Archive. The archived dataset unfortunately contains two women ‘named’ Hai – one in the Hanoi sample and one in the Ho Chi Minh sample. Forclarity, here we have ‘renamed’ Hai in the Ho Chi Minh sample as Mai.

276 C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

low-income rural-to-urban migrants in their peak child-bearingyears use to manage their reproductive and family lives, with partic-ular emphasis on parenting and marital relationships. Low-incomemigrant men and women in four purposive categories were identi-fied in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh using a combination of gatekeepers,usually local women’s officers, but also migrant guest house owners,as well as snowballing (see Table 1).

The life histories involved a two-part interview, often con-ducted consecutively at the preference of the migrants, consistingof a semi-structured questionnaire and a more narrative informalinterview that was tape recorded, transcribed and translated.8

The life histories need to be regarded as narrative data that expressesthe migrant’s subjectivities: the data is valuable for its reflection ofmigrants’ efforts at self-presentation, rather than as factual accounts(Reissman, 1990). The data is supported by structured informationabout informant’s, spouse’s and children’s moves, choices aboutantenatal and delivery care, residence and schooling, as well as bysecondary data and interviews with researchers who have workedclosely on migration in Vietnam.

Here our focus is on a sub-set of respondents: fourteen men andwomen with disrupted marital histories. This sub-set is summarisedin Table 2 and Appendix A offers a more detailed account of theircharacteristics and experiences.9 In our wider project, disrupted mar-ital histories had included divorce, abandonment, estrangement, sep-aration, single parenthood, whether or not respondents hadsubsequently remarried, as well as widowhood. Two of the womenwe interviewed were widows and as such we have excluded themfrom the in-depth discussion in this paper (Boyle et al. (2008) similarlyexclude windows from their study of union dissolution).

Men with disrupted marital histories proved difficult to identifyand reluctant to participate. Men quickly remarry after divorce andmost are reluctant to admit or discuss this inevitably painful his-tory (see also Brickell (2014) who experienced a similar reluctanceto participate in research from male divorcees in Cambodia). Ngu-

8 Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam and Nguyen Thi Ngan Hoa conducted the overwhelmingmajority of these interviews and verified every translation. In addition the quality oftranslation was verified for two interviews by an independent Vietnamese researcherand researchers referred back to Vietnamese transcripts during data interpretation.Ethical clearance was given by the University of East Anglia in the UK and by theVietnamese Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) and all names used here arepseudonyms. Quotations from migrants below, presented in italics, are verbatimtranslations from the in-depth interviews. Editorial additions to clarify sense are insquare brackets.

9 We targeted 5 respondents for each purposive category, which meant that ourintention was to interview 20 men and women with disrupted marital histories. Wewere only able to interview 16 for reasons explained in the text, of whom 2 wereexcluded from detailed analysis for this paper because they were widows.

yen Thi Ngan Hoa wrote the following about trying to interview di-vorced and separated migrant men: ‘‘they said their life was so sadand so miserable. Thus, it was hard for them to share their experi-ence with me. Some people participated in the semi-structuredinterview then they dropped the in-depth interview’’ (personalcommunication to Catherine Locke, 28 July 2008). Using a maleinterviewer in a few cases helped increase male response rates inHo Chi Minh but was less successful in Hanoi and in both caseswe failed to attain our target of five respondents. Those who didagree all remain in contact with, or have effective custody of, chil-dren from earlier marriages.

In contrast, the disrupted marital history of women, for whomdivorce is more shameful, is more visible because they rarely re-marry and often have children. Although their experiences wereextremely painful, we found that women were more willing to re-call their histories. This brings into question the accuracy of officialsurvey statistics like those quoted above, suggesting that men maysubstantially under-report divorce.

Furthermore, respondents, both female and male, unsurprisinglytended to portray themselves as the ‘victims’ and their spouse as theparty to blame. Whilst wife beaters, gamblers and womanisers madeappearances in women’s histories of marital disruption, they did notcome forward to participate in this research. The sample we didachieve is thus highly self-selective and must not be regarded as‘typical’ of migrants who experience marital disruption.

Before proceeding to an account of the trajectories of ‘divor-cees’, we first summarise some pertinent findings from the widerdataset about managing marital relations from a distance and thestrains that this incurs.

4. Spousal togetherness and strained marital relations

As we show elsewhere (Locke et al., 2012, 201310), the residen-tial separation of spouses is not inevitable where newly-marriedcouples or couples with young children pursue low income migra-tory livelihood strategies but it does occur in most relationships, atsome point, and for varying durations. Whilst in some cases this res-idential separation is deliberately limited for the purposes of tryingto ‘keep the family together’,11 in other cases it is either strategically

10 This section draws heavily on other analyses of the wider dataset (Locke et al.,2013) and on the changing conjugal relations of migrants to Hanoi (Locke et al., 2012).For ease of presentation we have not attempted line by line referencing but referreaders broadly to these other analyses for more detailed evidencing andargumentation.

11 ‘Keeping the family together’ may mean either mean father, mother and childrenliving together or more minimally mother (or father) and children living together.

C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283 277

or unavoidably chronic with separation of spouses being the domi-nant condition. Although these migrants placed a relatively high va-lue on the quality of inter-generational relations – particularlybetween new wife and mother-in-law – for ‘good’ marriage rela-tions, separations between husband and wife do strain conjugalroles, experiences and identities. The literature on internationalmigration has recognised these tensions for women as migrantmothers, particularly where they have had to leave children behind,and as migrant wives, who have to carefully safeguard their reputa-tion and may fear for their husbands’ fidelity (such as Parrenas(2001) and Piper and Roces (2003)). We have documented similartensions for women who migrate internally in Vietnam and haveshown how women who go away to work try to ‘remote parent’and construct their migration as part of the caring role. These wo-men experience grief at the loss of intimate everyday relations withtheir children, guilt at their poor fulfilment of mothering and wifelyidentities, and make sense of their painful absence as a ‘sacrifice’they owe their families.

However, the strains involved in family separation for men havebeen severely neglected both in literature on internal and interna-tional migration in Asia (with notable exceptions including Hoangand Yeoh (2012) and Parrenas (2008)). Our analysis of the widerdataset showed how spousal and parental separation for men withyoung families receives more ideological support, from both tradi-tion and official ideology, and in the context of lack of rural work be-comes almost an irresistible imperative. Indeed since doi moi, Martinnotes how ‘young married men are facing ‘dramatically increasinglevels of responsibility’, primarily in relation to their wives and fam-ilies (An 2002)’ (n.d.: 2) as they are now expected as main earners toprovide the social security for their families that was ‘once providedby the socialist state under the bao cap (subsidy) system) ‘(An 2002cited by Martin (n.d.: 3)). At the same time, men are regarded as the‘pillar of the house’ (tru cot) (Rydstrom, 2004: 80) and have impor-tant roles in loving and disciplining children, setting examples,and giving moral and occupational guidance to children. Tran ThiVan Anh stresses that the length of husband’s migration and the fre-quency with which they get in touch and visit home are indicators of‘‘how much they maintain their roles as fathers and husbands’’.12

Our analysis showed that men who have to ‘go away to work’ experi-ence a serious undermining of their family roles and identities, con-ceiving of their left-behind children as ‘lacking fathering’ andanxious about how long periods of separation may damage the ‘senti-ments’ between them and their wives. Some male migrants leave chil-dren with other relatives without either parent whilst their wifemigrates to a third location: unable to ‘keep the family together’ ineven a minimal sense, these men suffer a sense of crisis and failure.

Despite these strains, labour migration of husband or wife is mostoften a family strategy orientated to improving the life of the family,and especially the children: as we have argued, it is both about andin tension with fulfilling family roles. This position is supported by Thaoand Agergaard (2012) in their study of female migrants from Hung Yento Hanoi which found that migration rarely led to family fragmentationbecause migrant wives sustain marriages by ‘doing family’ well. Clearlythe strains of managing divided families do not always end in divorceand we found significant differences in the character and basis of con-jugal relationships and intimacy between couples. For instance, Dung’sexogenous love marriage to an ethnic minority woman from Lao Cai isgrounded in love and tolerance and he sympathises with the vulnera-ble situation she has found herself trapped in and says ‘‘I just want mywife to come home’’. Hung refers affectionately to his wife as ‘‘fierce’’and also has a marriage built on mutual respect and compromise.Whilst he trusts his wife he is anxious that their ‘understanding’ of

12 Tran Thi Van Anh (2008) personal communication, 10/3/2008, Institute for Familyand Gender Studies, Hanoi.

one another will diminish with extended periods of separation.Although Hung and Mai can both visit their spouses in the city, theyrarely do, and have to wait until they visit the village to be sexually inti-mate. Mai says ‘‘We are rural people, how can I say about love?. . . Wedid not think about love or our emotion.’’

Moreover the wider dataset reveals that migrating togetherwith a spouse does not necessarily signal conjugal intimacy or pre-sage a happy married life. Those who do migrate with their spousejustify this choice in markedly different ways: men tend to point toeconomic factors and women more explicitly to a range of emo-tional factors. Depending on their circumstances, migrating to-gether may afford little conjugal intimacy: many couples sharesmall rooms with 5 or 6 other couples. Whilst Linh echoes the feel-ings of other women when she says ‘‘sentimentally it is better tohave your husband with you’’, this ‘love’ talk may well concealthe desire to avert affairs that may pose a threat to husbands’ eco-nomic fidelity (see Phinney, 2008). In sum, the wider dataset cau-tions against ‘reading off’ marital relations from any specific familyarrangement: the kind of marriage, how it was contracted, and theevolving character of conjugal relations led to different strategiesof resilience and vulnerability for couples in the face of separation.

5. Disrupted marriages

We now turn to look in depth at the trajectories of marital disrup-tion experienced by our sub-sample of 14 migrant men and women.Appendix A includes a summary of the migrants’ characteristics, thenature of their marriage, its duration and issue, the reasons for dis-ruption and the migrants’ attitude to reconciliation, formal divorceand remarriage. The methodological stance we adopt here is thatin-depth qualititative analysis of a single case can generate insightsthat have theoretical relevance (Coles and Knowles, 2001) but indoing so, we acknowledge that our sub-sample is small and atypical.

The detailed discussion of the cases that follows is structuredthematically in relation to commonly held presumptions about di-vorce and migration dynamics. We use these as a foil against whichwe can deploy a deeper understanding of the dynamics betweenmigration and marital disruption drawn from our data.

5.1. Male intolerance of infidelity

Migration is seen as a threat to marital harmony because of itspotential to provide opportunities for infidelity. Normative ideolo-gies in Vietnam suggest divorce for women is so stigmatised that itis rarely initiated by women against men and that male intoleranceof sexual infidelity on the part of their wives is absolute. Howeverthe detailed case evidence here qualifies this in three, potentiallycontradictory, ways. Firstly, the data speak of women’s agency inleaving men if they perceive them to be inadequate providers orif they fall in ‘love’ with someone else. Secondly, the cases showconsiderably more tolerance and latitude in some men’s responsesto female infidelity than might be expected. Thirdly, they suggestthat the observance of proper conduct expected of a wife – whichis itself indicative of broader loyalty – is equally important to hus-bands even where there is no sexual infidelity.

Our sample included husbands who had been abandoned by wi-ves for economic and for emotional reasons. Both Thanh and Toan’smarriages fell apart because of concerns about their provisioning.In Thanh’s case an earlier migration to Laos for work ended up withsevere malaria and liver disease which nearly killed him. His wife’sfamily advised her to leave him and her daughter ‘‘because hemight die’’ and she did so. In Toan’s case his first two marriages fellapart within months, and before any children were born, becausehis wives were dissatisfied with the remittances that he broughthome. Toan describes them as thinking that ‘‘the grass is greener

278 C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

on the other side’’, narrating how they and their relatives wouldsay negative things about him and how his wives kept returningto their own families rather than residing as they should with hismother. In both these cases marital relations were underminedby the perception on the part of wives than husbands were not per-forming their providing role as successfully as they should. Toanrefutes the legitimacy of these sentiments, pointing to his effortsto maintain good relations with his in-laws and the loyal behaviourof other migrant men’s wives. These men’s security in marriage isnot unassailable; even where they are ‘good’ men avoiding socialevils, it is the adequacy of their bread winning that matters most.

In contrast to these cases where it was economic provision thatwas at issue, Sang and Duong’s wives left them for love. Sang wasmigrating when his wife had an affair with a mobile salt-traderwho visited their village. He emphasises her moral failings byreporting that at this time she also ‘‘indulged’’ in gambling.Although Sang forgave her, she ‘‘ran away’’ from him and theirtwo children. Sang says that she went away because she was tooashamed of what she had done. At first nobody knew where shewas, then there were reports of her being seen in the city ‘‘as some-one’s mistress’’. She has visited the children ‘‘just twice’’ since leav-ing. Duong’s wife had an affair with a neighbouring lottery ticketseller in the city whilst he was away working elsewhere. He tooagreed to take her back but instead she left their son at hismother’s house and ran away.

Despite the emphasis on sexual fidelity, male intolerance inpractice seemed to be more focused on public observance of nor-mative performances of loyalty and proper conduct than on sexualrelations. For example, Toan did not suspect his first two wives ofactually having affairs but the language he uses to describe theunacceptability of their behaviour is sexually inflected. He refersto their absence of the virtues expected of women (of properspeech and proper appearance respectively), and notably says‘‘my house is not a market’’ where his wives can come and go asthey please. The men who initiate marital separation in caseswhere marriage relations have disintegrated (as evidenced by wi-ves going back to their natal homes for longer or more frequentlythan is acceptable) describe themselves as having reached the lim-its of their tolerance. Even though relatives may advise them totake more time before separating, these men say ‘‘I could not in-dulge her any more’’. Contrary to the portrayal of male intoleranceas an immediate and absolute response to a single transgression, inthese cases male intolerance is triggered by extended periods inwhich wives have implicitly expressed dissatisfaction with themarriage through their public relocation to their natal homes.

The fairly universal shift to ‘love’ marriage in Vietnam is gener-ally considered to be a ‘good thing’ but criticism of arranged mar-riages tends to be strongly focused on female experiences, for goodreasons to do with patriliny and virilocality. As argued above, many‘love’ marriages in fact have many continuities with arranged mar-riages, particularly in the importance and sanction of parental ap-proval, in the gendered qualities that are regarded as desirable infuture spouses, and in the belief that love grows after marriageand through child-bearing. Viet’s experience, though, shows thedifficulties of marriage without love in the context of thwartedemotions from a masculine perspective. Viet had loved a womanhe met whilst migrating for work but his parents disapproved ofthe match so he ended the relationship. His parents then arrangedhis marriage to a village girl. Although he went along with this, hefelt uncomfortable about being intimate with her and the marriagewas unconsummated for 2 years even though he remained at homewith his new wife. Viet was planning to go away again for work butbecause of rumours in the village, he and his wife finally had sexbefore he travelled and she became pregnant immediately. The ab-sence of affection in this marriage meant that spousal separationwas strained. Viet’s wife felt he did not visit frequently enough

and feared that he had another relationship in the city. In protest,she kept returning to her mother’s house (in the same village).After 7 years of marriage she left for good as Viet felt he could‘‘not indulge her’’ any more and they agreed to separate.

Despite the strong social disapproval of divorce, and perhaps be-cause of it, men are said to remarry quickly and easily whilst womencannot. However, these men were extremely cautious about remar-riage and a key consideration for them was safeguarding the bestinterests of children from the first marriage. Of these 6 men, only 2had remarried at the point of interview. Toan successfully arrangedhis own third marriage with a clear sighted objective of seeking adutiful left-behind wife. Thanh was initially reluctant to remarrybut his parents advised him that his daughter would not always beliving with him. In time he remarries a woman migrant he courtsin the city and prioritises the unity of his new family and hisgrown-up daughter from his first marriage. Hung will not considerformal divorce or remarriage until his daughter is grown up in orderto protect her. Viet and Sang are suspicious about marriage aftertheir bad experiences. Hung, Viet and Sang are in effect single par-ents to their children who are currently left-behind with their par-ents in the village. Although Hung says he is disappointed not tohave a family life, he is very happy with his relationship with hisdaughter and all three take their parenting very seriously and notethe importance of this given the mother’s absence.

The formal mechanisms of divorce fail migrant men too becauseof the way in which the household registration system through thebureaucratic administration of entitlements remains tied to theirhome communes. For instance, Duong’s wife abandoned him andtheir son for a lottery-ticket seller. The son was so distraught at hismother’s departure that he was not well enough to enter school atthe right age. Duong now cannot get school entry for his son becausehis neighbourhood head is ‘uncooperative’ and he is now over-agefor grade and needs a ‘sympathy paper’ from his home district, inview of his mother’s desertion, to get late entry. He anticipates prob-lems for the baby his ‘second wife’ is expecting too: since his divorcehas not been registered at his home place, he cannot get an officialmarriage certificate for his second marriage, nor be able to applyfor the birth certificate, and without this cannot apply for school en-try. The administration of marriage, divorce and child-bearing is ahighly significant problem for migrants in a context where such doc-uments are used to gate-keep access to entitlements.

Despite the normative view that men’s position within mar-riage is relatively unassailable, these men found themselves to bevulnerable when they had difficulties meeting the provisioningexpectations of their wives. Although intolerance of female infidel-ity is confidently articulated, for these migrants ‘proper’ behaviouris as important as sexual fidelity on the part of a wife. Nevertheless,some of these migrants’ wives fell into affairs with other men, anddespite some men being prepared to show considerable tolerancein face of this fact, these wives left their husbands.

5.2. Double-standards and women’s reluctance to divorce: politedivorce and un-civil dissolutions

The migrant women’s narratives of marital disruption from thissub-sample are also exceedingly varied. Again despite the norma-tive emphasis on women’s endurance and reluctance to separate,these cases tell a rather different story. Four of these (eight) wo-men take the initiative in leaving their husbands. Mai Lien, Haand Hai all initiated separation from their husbands. Their com-plaints include drinking (Mai and Lien), gambling (Mai), violence(Lien), lack of care from husband and husband’s family (Ha) andhusband secretly setting up a second family (Hai).

However, migration did not lead to marital disruption in anystraightforward way. Mai married an urban resident (after 4 monthsof courtship) and Lien and Ha both married from very vulnerable

C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283 279

circumstances. Lien had been migrating with her mother and theyhad been homeless at times: she married a man who gave hermother money to rent them a room because she thought that ‘‘shewas too poor for anyone to marry’’. Ha’s marriage was arrangedthrough a matchmaker below the legal minimum age.13 She movedto her husband and his rural home on marriage but complained thatneither he nor his family took good care of her and after 18 monthsshe left to return to her mother’s house. Her urban migration for workwas triggered by the need to provide for her child after the marriagedisintegrated: so in her case ‘divorce’ led to migration but more foreconomic rather than social reasons. The instability in Lien’s marriagewas deeply rooted in her very vulnerable and poor childhood as a freemigrant with her mother.

In Hai’s case migration certainly provided the opportunity for herhusband without detection to set up a second family. She was told byher mother-in-law when she was in late pregnancy to ‘‘hurry up andgive birth so you can go up there to work with your husband. Other-wise I am afraid he would marry another wife!’’ Hai emphasises heroutrage at his on-going deception in her decision to ‘leave’ him. Thisis counterbalanced with Tran’s experience where migration pro-vided an escape route for an unfaithful husband who then left her.Significantly Tran’s estrangement from her husband was not causedby migration: rather migration provided a space for him to continuehis affairs without harassment and to withdraw from family obliga-tions. Some migration commentators have referred to this dynamicas a ‘polite’ divorce (Elson, 1992) and the arrangement whereby anestranged couple continue to perform marriage in an attenuatedform – through wife’s ongoing residence with in-laws for instance– has been observed in preference to divorce in Vietnam (Belangerand Li, 2009: 223).

Notably playing the ‘good wife’ and developing strong relationswith in-laws insulates women again separation – both in the sensethat it is hard for husband to divorce ‘good’ wives but also in thesense that even where the marriage breaks down through hus-band’s bad behaviour, in-laws it seems may be quite likely to sidewith the daughter-in-law (this applies to Tran, as well as to Maiand Ha – even though they both instigated the separation). Inter-estingly, Tran is potentially vulnerable at first marriage – sinceher husband married her for love against the wishes of his parents– but she proves to be an ideal daughter-in-law. Tran’s good rela-tions with her in-laws mean that she retains a cherished place inher marital home as daughter-in-law despite her husband’sestrangement. Although there has been a degree of reorientationfrom inter-generational relations to conjugal relations as the focusof marriage and child-bearing, the importance of the relations be-tween the wife and her in-laws can endure the disintegration ofthe marriage. Being a ‘good’ wife appears to insulate women fromsocial disapproval (‘‘I don’t think he can divorce me’’) – as well asproviding for the sustaining of inter-generational relationshipsthat provide security around marriage. Crucially, however, theseties may not support women in formalising divorce (Mai’s in-lawsasked her not to formalise divorce so that they could ensure thather children inherited the house).14 These cases also show that

13 The Marriage and Family Law of 2000 sets the minimum age at marriage forwomen at 18 years and for men at 20 years. Given the gendered thresholds , it istelling that this legal reform is framed in Vietnam as giving ‘equal’ rights to men andwomen in marriage

14 Although reforms in family law now give women equal rights with men indivorce and inheritance, in practice it is very difficult for women to inherit and theyare reluctant to dispute inheritance. Children join their fathers’ patriliny and thefamily house and property is customarily inherited by the eldest (or sometimes theyoungest) son, with daughters receiving small symbolic items. Traditionally sons,particularly the inheriting son, are responsible for looking after their ageing parentsas a core part of filial piety. Before the law women and men have equal parentingauthority but in practice it is difficult for women to claim custody of children that thefather and his patriliny wish to continue to bring up. This is inevitably particularly soin the case of sons.

disapproval of men’s extra-marital affairs and of their divorce ismuch stronger than commonly assumed. Paternal in-laws disap-proved of ‘bad’ behaviour of their sons, even to the extent of dis-inheriting sons in favour of grandsons.

Perhaps the two most dramatically retold cases of marital disrup-tion for women are those of Cuc and Minh, both of whom established‘love’ relationships outside of conventional marriage norms.15 Cucknowingly entered into a relationship in the city with a marriedman from her village. She had three children with him, but his motherand wife refused to accept her back in the village as his concubine andafter a beating from her mother-in-law the relationship disintegrated.In contrast, Minh was tricked into ‘marrying’ a rural migrant who wasalready married. They met in the city and she ‘married’ him despiteher family’s disapproval. He went back to his village for the harvestand did not return: she followed him and discovered that he was al-ready married. The value for a woman of family approval of theirmatch is usually predicated on being able to verify the identity andcharacter of prospective marriage partners and their families: this isvital to being able to ask for their support if things go wrong, eventhough it does not guarantee their support. For Cuc and Minh becom-ing ‘stranded in the city’ represents a much more vulnerable situationthan being ‘left-behind’: this is reflected in various cases where wo-men are excluded from their natal villages after divorce, after the dis-integration of adulterous relations (or in one case in our wider datasetbecause of the prolonged mental illness of a husband).

Despite formal equity in legal provisions for divorce, our dataconfirms that women tend not to pursue a formal divorce. The rea-sons for this are varied: some simply hope that their husband maychange over time and return to look after his family, like Nga; oth-ers like Minh avoid redress through the law because she fears herhusband and his family will claim their son (since his wife has onlygiven birth to daughters); and others, like Mai, have been advisedthat formalising divorce might sever continuing channels of finan-cial support and inheritance for children from in-laws. Interest-ingly, whilst non-payment of maintenance by husbands certainlyoccurs frequently, even some apparently ‘dissolute’ fathers mayfulfil obligations. For instance, Nga’s husband, who was a violentgambler who left her after she got into debt over an unsuccessfulbusiness venture, keeps up maintenance payments and visits thechildren regularly whilst Cuc’s husband visits his youngest daugh-ter frequently and brings her older sisters for visits. (Wives whoabandon husbands and children are similarly liable for mainte-nance in the eyes of the law, but although a couple of men reportthat wives who ran away left behind lump sums for children, nei-ther maintained contact or provided regular payments.)

6. Conclusion

Whilst absences from husband or wife undoubtedly strainedmarital relations, these strains do not lead in any straightforwardway to divorce or separation. The resilience of marriage relationswithin Vietnam is not simply a matter of conformity to traditionalexpectations but involves complex gendered expectations, obliga-tions, desires and manoeuvrings in which the concerns of hus-bands’ parents and children feature prominently. These accountsunderline the importance in a ‘low divorce’ society such as Viet-nam of attention to marital ‘disruptions’ more broadly, rather thana narrow concern (or lack of it) driven by divorce statistics. Partic-ularly important within Vietnam in these disruptions are profound

15 Davin observes for China that there are greater risks, particularly for women,involved in marriages that are contracted over long distances partly because women‘‘are unable to use the customary stay at their mother’s home (niangjia) to negotiateproblems with their in-laws’’ (1999: 147). This warning is pertinent for migrants inVietnam who contract marriages non-endogenous love marriages without theirparents’ approval.

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280 C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

estrangements between husband and wife in which joint house-holding is in many respects maintained. It may well be that mobil-ity eases the difficulties of sustaining such a disruption because itcan more easily enable continuing close relationships, sometimeseven co-residence, with husband’s family. The evidence also sug-gests extreme caution in handling survey-based reporting of mar-ital disruption, separation, divorce and remarriage in ‘low divorce’societies where marital dissolution carries considerable stigma.These are likely to severely under-estimate the extent of maritaldisruption and where that stigma and the possibilities for remar-riage are gendered, these figures will also reflect that gender bias(underestimating the risk of marital disruption to men).

Further our evidence suggests that gendered presumptionsabout the dynamics of marital disruption in Vietnam are overlyreductive of both women and men’s agency. This supports Consta-ble’s insights that ‘‘. . .women [as well as men] creatively manoeu-vre across transnational terrain in order to realise their desiredmarital subjectivities’’ (2003: 163). As Martin has observed in rela-tion to young men and masculinities in the doi moi era, the micropolitics of gender in Vietnam are ‘uncertain and often contradic-tory’ (n.d.: 8). He sees Vietnam as characterised by a ‘normativeambivalence’ in Vietnam that arises from ‘multiple traditions ofdiscursive rationality’ in a context where there exists ‘competitivecoexistence of different values and institutions’ (with reference toWoodside (2006) and Marr (2000)). Our exploration of subjectivenarratives of marital disruption appears to confirm the way inwhich the indeterminacy leaves unexpected space for male toler-ance, female desertion and marital estrangements without divorce.

There is a need to move away from anxiety about marital disso-lution driving perceptions or the agenda on migration. Instead, theright questions to ask and the right policy response to these sets ofconcerns needs to focus on ideological, social and material strate-gies for revaluing social reproduction. For instance, it is unhelpfulto push official ideological norms requiring women’s dual respon-sibility for domestic work and for income generation: these leavemigrating mothers in a no-win situation. Nor are ideal family mod-els that neglect to attend to emotional intimacy within marriage,or that overlook male family roles that extend beyond parenting,helpful: space needs to be created to revalue the linkages betweensocial reproduction, intimacy and masculinity. There is potentialfor a very significant role for improvement of registration of mar-riages and divorces to meet the needs of increasingly mobile pop-ulation. These should include new bureaucratic mechanisms toassure the veracity of new marriage partners, social protectionmechanisms orientated towards supporting the continuity of in-ter-generational family relations in the face of divorce, and mate-rial support for those who have experienced marital disruptionand are caring for young children.

Finally, the evidence supports the call by Brickell and Datta (2011)to extend the concept of transnational householding beyond analyti-cal interest in the crossing of national borders to address translocalhouseholding more broadly. Within this scholarship, the deepeningof understandings about what increased mobility implies for house-holding needs to ensure that our academic gaze is as attentive tothe centrifugal forces and processes of householding ‘together’ as wellas to the centripetal forces and processes that disrupt marriages(Brickell, 2012). Marital disruption is far from an inevitable conse-quence of migration but detailed investigations of marital disruptionscan usefully extend our understanding of the ways in which mobilityplays into the continuous and iterative negotiations by men and wo-men over the terms on which they household.

Nam

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Appendix A. ‘Divorce’ trajectories for the sub-sample

Appendix A. (continued)

Name (sex, age) Work;Destination

Pre-maritalmigration history;Marriage type

Marriage partner;Duration ofrelationship

Instigator of separation;Reason for separation

Children (sex and age); Contact,custody, and maintenance

Current living arrangements;Formal status of separation

Thanh; (M, 48years)

Carpenter;HCM

Migrated beforemarriage

Rural womannever migrated

She left him; On herparents advice since theythought he was going to die

1 (daughter, 20 years); Now son, 2years, form second marriage. All livetogether in city

Lives with second wife (amigrant he met in city) andboth children; Formaldivorce. Initially reluctant toremarry

Duong; (M, 32years)

Mason;HCM

Migrated to HCM;Married woman hemet in HCM

Met her in city; 6years

She left him; She had affairand ran away

1 (son 7 years); Lives with Duongand new wife. No contact withmother

Remarried throughmatchmaker in city andexpecting second child; Noformal divorce and so nomarriage certificate forsecond marriage

Nga: (F, 35 years) Worker onbutcher’sstall: Hanoi

Migrated to Hanoi;Married to spite ex-boyfriend

Male urbanresident of Hanoi;10 years

Husband left her; He was aviolent gambler but finallyleft when she lost moneyon a failed stall

2 (Daughter 12 years, daughter 8years); Husband keeps contact withgirls and pays maintenance

She lives with daughters incity and will not return to thevillage; No formal divorceand hopes he will return

Hai; (F, 28 years) Childminder andjunk seller;Hanoi

Never migratedbefore marriage;Arranged marriage

Male ruralmason-cooliemigrating toHanoi; 4 years

She left husband; He tookanother partner when shewent home to birth

1 (son, 5 years); Judge gave hercustody and awarded maintenancewhich husband does not pay; hisparents gave her 2 M VND andintend to leave their house tograndson

Poverty means that she isforced to migrate and leaveson behind with her mother.Formal divorce

Cuc; (F, 39 years) Goodscarrier andstreetvendor;Hanoi

Migrated to Hanoi;Cohabited withmarried man fromher natal village

Male rural –urban migrantalready married;9 years

She left after being beatenby mother-in-law; In-lawsand wife would not accepther as a concubine

3 (daughters 10, 9 and 2 yrs); Olderchildren live with his family invillage and he brings them to visit;younger child lives with her but alsogoes for visits with father

She lives with younger girl incity and wants to buy herown land in her village; Noformal marriage or divorce

Tran (F, 37 years) Goodscarrier;Hanoi

Never migrated; Lovemarriage that neitherparents accepted

Rural man; 15years

He left her; To pursue affairin the city

3 (daughters 14 years and 13 years,son 8 years); Husband sends moneyand visits children

She migrates leaving childrenwith in-laws and sendingthem remittances; Estrangedfrom husband but cherishedpart of her in-laws family

Lien (F, 30 years) Tailor;HCM

Migrated from earlyage; Married a manher cousinintroduced in city

Man who gaveher mothermoney to rent aroom; 2 years

She left him; He was aquarrelsome drunk

1 (daughter 7 years); All contactsevered by her

Lives with her daughter andher mother in the city; Noformal divorce or marriage.Has boyfriend of 2 yearsstanding who treats her well

Minh (F, 36 years) Junk trader;HCM

Migrated beforemarriage; ‘Married’against wishes of herfamily

Rural migrant shemet in city; Lessthan 1 year

He abandoned her; He wasalready married in thevillage

1 (son, 5 years); Son lives with heruncle in her village

She migrates alone; Noformal court case as she fearshusband and his family mayclaim their son (as his wifeonly born daughters)

(continued on next page)

C.Lockeet

al./Geoforum

51(2014)

273–283

281

App

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fore

mar

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e;M

arri

edm

ansh

ew

asm

atch

edw

ith

afte

r4

mon

ths

Urb

anre

side

nt;

7ye

ars

She

left

him

;H

ew

asdr

un

kan

dga

mbl

er.S

he

sent

chil

dren

toh

erh

ome

and

he

mov

edba

ckin

wit

hh

ism

oth

er

2(S

on8

year

s,da

ugh

ter

4ye

ars)

;C

hil

dren

live

wit

hh

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ren

tsin

vill

age

Mai

live

sal

one

inci

ty

No

form

aldi

vorc

e.Sh

ew

asad

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dag

ain

stit

byh

isfa

mil

yw

ho

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th

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ella

nd

wan

th

erch

ildre

nto

inhe

rit

thei

rh

ouse

Ha

(F,2

6ye

ars)

Wor

ker

atst

one

grin

din

gco

mpa

ny;

HC

M

Nev

erm

igra

ted

befo

rem

arri

age;

Mar

ried

un

dera

ge(1

6ye

ars)

thro

ugh

mat

chm

aker

Ru

ral

man

;4

year

sSh

ele

fth

im;N

eith

erh

en

orh

isfa

mil

yto

okca

reof

her

.H

ew

asir

resp

onsi

ble

1(d

augh

ter,

8ye

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;H

erm

oth

erlo

oks

afte

rh

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ugh

ter

Ha

live

sal

one

inci

ty;

No

form

alm

arri

age

ordi

vorc

e.D

oes

not

wan

tto

rem

arry

282 C. Locke et al. / Geoforum 51 (2014) 273–283

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